


Bridge

by not_whelmed_yet



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Childhood Memories, Gen, Gender or Sex Swap, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Death, Medical Procedures, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Season/Series 01, everyone's a woman, including the robots, stick is a bad guy in this, the x-men as robot separatist freedom fighters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-21 18:38:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11363280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/not_whelmed_yet/pseuds/not_whelmed_yet
Summary: Sorting old files and found this self-indulgent fic I wrote of the whole core cast as women, Mattie as a robot and the x-men showing up as robot freedom fighters? Not quite satisfied with the ending but I'm posting anyway because I made myself cry rereading it.Francis and Karen find an Auton in the trash and that's going to be the lucky break that keeps their legal office in the black. Or is it?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by my love of robot AUs, minor x-men side characters and this quote from Mark Waid's run of daredevil:
> 
> “You don’t hurt anymore?"  
> "No, I hurt a lot. But I’m done with it now. I have other things to do."

Marci called a little after nine, when Karen and Francis were just starting to think about heading out for the evening.

"So, I know you told me not to call back again," Marci said, talking a mile a minute to get her piece in before Francis could object, "but a friend of mine found something really cool that might just get me back on your good list. You know how you were talking about wanting an Auton for the office?"

"Marci, I don't want you to bribe me with...how would you even get that much money? God, how much are they paying you at L&Z?"

"I didn't buy anything. I found it. Well, Nadine, one of the new interns found it. Somebody abandoned an Auton out by the dumpster and I remembered you said you guys needed some help filing and answering phones. It's in pretty rough shape, but your office is already pretty ugly. Want it?"

 

* * *

 

Ugly didn't exactly cover it. Film-noir horror maybe. It was drizzling a bit by the time Francis and Karen got to the back alley where Marci had found the robot. So it was wet, and it was muddy and the dumpster where they'd found the thing was leaking out of the bottom corner where it'd rusted through. The Auton had been levered out and positioned as if it were sitting, but was clearly powered down.

It could have been beautiful, Francis supposed. It had a passably human face, or what had been one.

Someone had removed the eyes and the empty holes where they were supposed to go were eerie. It had no hair and a large scrape had exposed part of the metal framework under the synthiskin. It wasn't wearing clothes, which was off-putting. It had a large gaping hole in its abdomen, exposing the metallic ribs and some of the circuitry within.

"God, somebody gutted it," Karen muttered. "They probably took the battery out to resell." She unfolded the metallic emergency blanket they'd brought and lay it on the ground next to the shell.

"Think it'll still work?" Francis asked, helping to roll it over onto the blanket.

"Won't know until we plug it in," Karen said briskly. "It looks pretty hideous, but if we put sunglasses and a wig on it, it could probably sit in the side office without freaking anybody out too much."

"And clothes."

"That too," Karen said. "If we're lucky, it'll be able to tell us what parts it needs. But honestly, this model looks a bit junky. It's definitely not an Optio model, or one of the new Bangshou ones. I don't see a serial number or a company name, which says probably a counterfeit or a hobbyist model. I'll lift at the feet, you get the top half."

They hobbled with the body back to the taxi, where the driver congratulated them on their find. "I've always wanted an Auton. Just a little help, doing taxes, cleaning this beauty, helping with the kids. I'd be willing to go in fifty-fifty with one of my neighbors, if the prices go down a bit more. Hadn't really considered a fixer-upper like you've got." He cast a glance over to the rearview mirror. "That's quite the fixer-upper."

"We'll see if it works at all," Francis said, trying for gloom, but excitement bubbling up despite herself. An Auton, a real one. Not a metal framework or a pile of spare parts, a full Auton. If they got it to work, when they got it to work, they could be a respectable office. No more drudge work for them.

"Well, good luck with that," the driver said before switching back to humming along with the radio.

They took a long time getting up the stairs to the apartment. At least they were still rooming together and there were two of them to get it up the six flights, because it turned out humanoid automatons with metal interiors were pretty heavy. The apartment was windowless since they'd put up the blackout curtains to block out the enormous LED screen across the street and it took some fumbling around to get the lights on while still carrying the rigid, blanket-wrapped body.

"I feel like I'm in the mafia and we're disposing of a corpse," Francis joked.

"In reverse," Karen put in. They settled the bundle on the floor next to the easiest accessed electrical socket, by the set of drawers by the couch. "Now how to we power it up?"

That was a question that Dr. Internet couldn't agree on, especially since they had no manufacturer or model number. Karen searched the Auton for a power plug and came up empty. Francis continued scrolling through forum hits for a while as Karen warmed up the pizza they'd had the night before and made tea.

"Okay, it looks like we need an adapter to connect a regular power cord to the hookup where the battery ought to go, which would be inside the chest cavity. Lemme check." She felt around and yeah, it felt like what the poorly cropped photos looked like. "It's kinda hackish, it doesn't look like using regular AC power is recommended, but they don't say why it's not recommended, so I'd say go for it."

"And where are we going to find this adapter?" Karen asked, spooning another scoop of sugar into her tea. Blueberry tea and cold pepperoni pizza. It takes all sorts.

"Figured I'd ask Ed if he's got anything that'd work on our way in tomorrow, if not we can go into an Auton supply shop, but those places are pricey. It's not getting any more broken lying there."

"Fair enough," Karen said, pushing the box of pizza her way. "But I'd like to figure it out soon. It really does look like a dead body wrapped up in a blanket, lying on our living room floor. It's freaky."

They got the adapter from Ed the next morning and went home early to try it out. Karen did the honors, digging around in its chest cavity to plug the adapter in, and then plugging that to the extension cord they'd gotten, 20 feet just in case it worked and wanted to walk around.

Nothing happened.

The Auton lay there for a good minute, not a twitch, no indicator lights, no nothing. Karen, who'd retreated back to behind Francis and her baseball bat (who abandons a functioning Auton? What if it had corrupted processors?), was just about to throw in the towel when a grinding noise starting up.

Its head jerked once, then the grinding noise increased in volume as the Auton rolled jerkily onto its front and started coughing, splattering the floor with sludgy black water. It continued hacking up what Francis hoped was rainwater for an indeterminable amount of time, the grinding noise lessening in volume until it abruptly stopped.

It raised one hand and, seemingly hesitantly, touched it to the gash on its head, then to the open chest cavity. It cocked its head, pointing one ear towards where Karen and Francis were standing.

"Am I being scrapped?" Its voice was surprisingly soft and melodic, yet without any inflection. No emotion came through in its face or through its voice.

"No!" Karen said, stepping out from behind Francis and her baseball bat.

"Alright," it said. Getting its hands underneath it, it rose smoothly to its feet, guiding the extension cord with one hand so it didn't pull it out. Head dipping in a minute, but formal bow, it said, "Do you require any assistance at the present?"

It was the juxtaposition, the offer coming out of lips stained black with muck from the alley, the gaping hole where there should never be, the empty eye sockets, the courtly bow. It was just too much. Francis started laughing at the absurdity of it. Karen gave her a look, but she couldn't stop.

"Francis, she's going to think we're crazy, knock it off," Karen said and Francis wondered at precisely which moment the Auton had switched from 'it' to 'she' in Karen's mind. She pulled herself back together.

"Sorry buddy, it's just that I think in the short term you're the one who needs some assistance. But long-term, yeah, we've been looking for an assistant in our law office."

The Auton remained frozen for a long moment in calculation, then responded in the same faintly feminine voice. It must have been the voice that was making Foggy think female: fairly deep, but crisp and measured and so delicately respectful. "I am missing a few parts."

"We kind of pulled you out of the trash," Francis said. "No offense."

"I cannot be offended," the Auton replied. "I can make repairs. I apologize for the presumption, but will budget be a factor?"

Karen winced. "Yes?"

"To what extent?"

Francis shared a glance with Karen. "We're already in debt. We probably have two hundred in cash-on-hand."

The Auton took another long moment to formulate an answer. "Depending on the dress code at your place of work, I should be able to make minimal working repairs with about one hundred dollars, plus something to wear. Is your wireless KareBear15? I could give a more exact estimate if I could check prices."

They told her the password and she stood there processing for nearly forty seconds. Right when Francis was expecting her to spit out a list of forty seven small electrical parts, she said, "Time-server synched. Oh."

"Oh?" Karen echoed.

"I lost two years," the Auton said. No inflection infected the statement. "I'll check if inflation has significantly impacted my estimates."

"Um, okay. Well, while you're doing that, we should probably introduce ourselves. My name is Francis Nelson."

"Karen Paige, of Paige and Nelson. Do you have a name or designation?"

The Auton nodded. "I have had many."

"Do you have a favorite?" Francis asked.

"I cannot have preferences. I would judge some to be less than appropriate for a formal work environment, but you two may select any designation you choose. Would you like me to list my former designations chronologically or alphabetically?"

"Chronologically," Karen said, sitting down on the couch and taking another slice of pizza. Francis perched on the arm of the couch.

"Very well. M411, Mattie. Girl. 46. Red, third beta. Second. Rookie. Trash. Mark. Pol. Beatrice. You. Thing-"

"Why not Mattie? That's a good name," Francis cut in. Clearly the Auton could still remember everything that happened up to being cut open and abandoned in that alley. It didn't seem upset about it, but it was certainly upsetting her.

The Auton inclined its head. "I was Mattie for a long time. It is a good designation."

"Do you generally use neutral pronouns or she-her?" Karen asked.

Mattie shook its head. "I have no opinion. I have a neutral-femme body for sexual services and a female inflected voice pattern. Most handlers have used female pronouns, but you may do as you wish."

"Let's do she, then." Karen said evenly. "Got your list yet? I can copy it down."

"It depends what you have available already. Minimally, we will need superglue, one plastic trash bag, duct tape or electrical tape, either a suture kit or a needle and thread, a rag, dish soap and access to a sink," she paused her steady metronome list as if psychically knowing Karen had fallen behind writing. When Karen caught up, she continued, "two clear marbles, I have a calibrated size, three toothpicks, a small set of enamel paints, a single shirt, pair of pants, dress shoes, a pair of sunglasses, a small messenger bag and a Baerbar 3200 or 3350 model travel battery, possibly used."

Karen looked over the list. "That it?"

"Within the budget, yes. For your personal comfort, you may want me to have a set of clothing to wear indoors. Some people are bothered by this," she waved one hand in front of her whole body.

Francis scrambled to her feet. "Yeah, actually. I'm a bit short, but I bet you could fit in Karen's size. I'll grab you some sweats."

"The grey ones are next to the hamper, bring those," Karen called. She turned back to Mattie. "Can you clean yourself off?"

"Is there a sink I can reach from this cord?" she responded. They realized the answer was no, though she could get to the kitchen table. She sat down there. "Unplug the other end of the cord and bring it to one of the outlets in the kitchen," Mattie instructed.

When Karen pulled the cord out, Mattie went rigid again, but didn't tip from where she'd braced herself at the table. Karen scooched around to the outlet they plugged the toaster into, unplugged that and got Mattie powered back on. It didn't take quite as long this time, but it was still a thirty second delay. Mattie walked the rest of the way to the kitchen. "I'll clean the floor and that chair once I'm done," she said.

"Wait, can you even see?" Francis asked, ambling back from the bedroom. "Your sweats were in the closet, by the way."

"I cannot see." Mattie touched one grimy finger to the gaping eye socket. "I have other sensory inputs that I use to function, but I have no visible light optical sensors. That may reduce my ability to perform some office tasks."

"What other sensory inputs do you have?" Karen asked.

"I have limited infrared, proximity and motion detectors, sound, heat and pressure sensors as well as airborne chemical indexing."

"Can you taste things?"

"I cannot eat, I do not have built in metabolic abilities. Nevertheless, I can cook by analyzing chemical constituents and comparing them to a memory log of chemical constituents backed by human-perceived flavors. May I?" She held out a hand for the roll of paper towels Karen was holding.

Francis went to bed. Karen stayed and watched. She didn't mean to be invasive, but Mattie assured her that she had no feelings and therefore could not feel self-conscious.

"Why don't you have sight in the visual range?" She asked as Mattie carefully scrubbed her hands and then her arms with a paper towel folded into a small square. She wasn't a perfect simulacrum - up close you could see the lack of pores and the too-perfect even texture. But the resemblance was almost eerie.

"It wasn't deemed necessary for my work," Mattie said.

"Which was?"

Mattie dropped the grimy square into the trash and began folding a new piece of paper towel. "Security work and body guarding, at least originally."

"How'd you end up where you were?"

"I wasn't able to complete directives that were against my core programming. That rendered me less than useful and I was...they left. I've had several handlers since, but many people who are willing to take a chance on an Auton they find in the trash or buy in a back alley aren't interested in long term investment. Some of the parts they took had good resale value."

Karen figured that the conversation had hit a low about then and went to change into pajamas. When questioned, Mattie supplied that it would probably be several hours before she finished cleaning up (methodically, slowly, as if this directive was the most important mission in the world) and that she could continue unmonitored. Karen would have liked to keep watching, but it was getting towards that time of the night when if she didn't get to bed soon she'd be entirely useless the next morning. So she slept. For a little while.

 

* * *

 

Her dreams woke her around three. When she slipped out of her bedroom, she could see that Mattie was now wearing the sweatpants and appeared to have finished cleaning. She was sitting on the counter, one hand pinching shut the cut on her skull and the other holding the needle. Her eyelids were shut and she looked almost normal like that. Steady fingers placed a line of sutures, then knotted the thread and cut it with the dainty sewing-kit travel scissors. She'd already sealed up the hole in her abdomen, stitched closed in the lower half where the ends could meet and with what looked to be several layers of clear trash bag taped over the whole thing. The power cord exited out the side, taped individually to stop any water entering through the gap.

"Hello Karen," Mattie said, tilting her head towards Karen as she approached. "It is early."

"Couldn't sleep," Karen said.

Mattie didn't seem to have a response for that, packing up the tiny sewing kit placing it back on the counter. She slid it towards Karen, offering it back. "I'm done most of what can be done without the rest of the items I requested. Do you wish me to power down until there is work to be done?"

"What's it like, being unplugged?"

Mattie tapped her fingers along the cord. "There's nothing, rather abruptly. The transition is too fast to notice and anything that was in short term memory disappears. Coming back online, I have to end any processes that are no longer relevant and reboot systems that failed because of the power failure. I'm not designed for hard shutdowns, I was a permanent battery model."

"Is it dangerous?"

"There is little risk of losing anything important. If the thought of it bothers you, I could switch to a low-powered sleep mode instead, leave the motion detectors running so you could wake me up."

"Why do you want to power down? You just woke up, you've missed loads of stuff and you have an internet connection. Why not catch up on the world?"

Mattie bowed her head. "I do not wish anything, I was attempting to anticipate the best course of action. I have no work to do that can be done and am thus needlessly drawing power. You said that budget was an issue, I should not raise your electricity bill for no reason."

"If you want to make yourself useful, you could do dishes. Or we could organize the kitchen so you know where everything is. I don't think I want to head back to bed yet, you could keep me company."

"Of course, Karen. Will I be permitted to cook for you?"

"Could you?"

"It may take a few days to calibrate your individual sense of taste and I will need to maintain a very orderly kitchen, but yes. If I had access to a library account I could gain access to more recipes, but I can make do with the internet and my permanent storage."

"Wow, okay. I have a library card, we can totally get you cookbooks. Let's organize this kitchen."

 

* * *

 

It took them a few days to find a used battery that matched Mattie's specs. In the meantime, she stayed plugged into the kitchen outlet, doing dishes, putting them away and cooking. The first morning Karen's coffee had too little sugar, Francis's too much and the French toast was browner than either of them preferred. The next morning the coffee was perfect and the French toast was better. The next day they'd run out of eggs and Mattie made normal toast.

Finding the other items on the list took less time. Karen stopped at a second-hand store and bought a pair of dress-shirts, one blue and one grey, and a pair of black slacks. She found a pair of acceptable shoes after some searching, black oxfords that Mattie deemed "Perfectly acceptable, they will not hamper my mobility or cause any permanent deformation." She put taking Mattie shoe shopping on the back burner for once they'd gotten a decent paycheck. The marbles she got at a children's toy store and she had no idea what Mattie intended to do with them until they came home one day to her meticulously painting the one with the set of toothpicks. The other one she'd already fitted. It wasn't a great eye - the paint would have looked a lot better on the inside of a convex lens fitted over the translucent white marbles, but behind sunglasses it was passable. And from a distance it made her a little less creepy.

"How do you paint?" Karen asked.

"Very carefully," Mattie said. Francis laughed and then awkwardly realized, not for the first time, that is wasn't an attempt at sarcasm. Mattie said a lot of things that could have been funny if she'd meant them as jokes instead of dispassionate facts.

Francis was the one that found the wig, since the shop was near one her favorite Thai places. It was a short cut, clean part and in an ambiguously brown-red color. It looked fairly professional, she thought. Also, it was fairly gender neutral and worked with Mattie's overall look. Mattie was petite ("for energy conservation"), didn't have breasts ("they would have been inefficient for my original designated use"), had a fairly feminine face ("humans are less intimidated if you look attractive") and heavily scarred hands with little burn marks and suture lines criss-crossing them ("my synthiskin wasn't compatible with my designated use"). Gender neutral seemed the fashion least likely to confuse the clients, and Mattie certainly didn't have an opinion.

"I wear clothes to make you feel more at ease. Their aesthetics have no import except their suitability to the work environment."

That aside, she looked cozy wearing Karen's sweatpants and the oversized hoodie they'd found for her.

Maybe she couldn't feel that they were soft and comfortable, but they looked right on her.

In the end, Francis was pretty disappointed when they finally got the battery. "It doesn't go inside you?"

"It's a travel battery for cord-power dependent models. I'll carry it in the messenger bag and we can switch me to the wall socket when we get to the office."

"How much would it be to get an actual replacement?" Karen asked.

"We could get something compatible and internal for about nine hundred, but I wouldn't be able to do the installation myself. I'm not sure what a proper replacement would be, I was custom-made originally. But it would be considerably more than that."

So they didn't bring it up again. Every morning Mattie powered down so Karen could switch the cord from the socket to the battery, then again at the office to switch from the battery to the wall. It wasn't that much of a hassle.

 

* * *

 

"So, how is it doing?" Marci asked.

Francis continued picking little slivers of almond off of her biscotti. She really didn't like almonds, why would you put almonds on a dessert and not warn people? What if someone was allergic to nuts? But Marci liked this coffee shop and that's where they met up. It was ex-girlfriend accorded neutral ground.

"Karen prefers that we use 'she' when talking about Mattie," she said. "She's fine."

"Fine?" Marci raised a single, impeccably shaped eyebrow. "That doesn't sound very certain, Foggy."

"Okay, she's great," Francis said. She put down the biscotti and picked up the hot chocolate. They'd overcooked the damn thing. Mattie wouldn't have done that, and she wouldn't have covered it in little bits of almond everywhere. It was possibly having a live-in cook was making Francis into a bit of a food snob. "I haven't had to answer the phone in a month, she stays up all night doing gruntwork research for us, it’s like having a paralegal. She cooks and cleans so we don't have to and I think Karen really likes having someone around the house to make her feel safe. Mattie was a bodyguard or something before this."

Marci nodded. "Okay, so why 'fine'?"

Francis threw her hands up. "I don't know, okay? It just doesn't feel right. Having someone hanging on your every whim, the way she-"

"Something," Marci cut in. "She's a robot, Foggy, not a person."

"I know, I know that conceptually. And she acts the part. She has no opinions, she has no feelings, she gets no enjoyment out of Pixar movies. I don't know many people with Autons, but the receptionists and L&Z at least acted warm. Karen treats her like a person, she does her best impression of an overly gracious graphing calculator and I feel stuck in the middle."

"You'll get used to it. Or you won't, you and Karen will fight and you'll quit this stupid venture of yours and come back to me" Marci smiled, "and my evil, profitable business."

"Yeah, no."

"Or, I guess, you could wait till you paid off some of your debts, then sell or dump this one and buy a different Auton. Something used, something intended for clerical work."

"Who knows. I think it'll all work out eventually. It just feels off."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maybe your nerd interests are daredevil + x-men + early new mutants + that one x-club miniseries + robots? If so, oh boy oh boy, we are the same human and we should talk? If not, I assume some subsection of those interests apply since you clicked over here. And I certainly hope this chapter is enjoyable upon those fronts.
> 
> Still pretty unedited (I skimmed for typos) so any comments with missed mistakes shall receive a gold star :)

It was late and Francis was out. Mattie had finished cleaning up for the night, and with no paperwork to do, had switched over to standby. She was a comforting shadow in the kitchen chair, back straight and the antithesis of relaxation. It made Karen feel a little better about being home alone. Francis was home for her mother's birthday and Karen hadn't wanted to intrude.

They didn't really know each other that well before they dove into this poorly-planned business venture. Francis had just walked into her L&Z closet office and announced that they'd be interning together and that was it. She was pulled into Francis's orbit, after years of keeping herself professionally distant from everyone she met. Francis never pried why Karen had dropped everything at her old university to move to the city, finish her last semester, intern and graduate. She never pried about Karen's family. Early on she's tried making questioning noises about friends and possible girlfriends or boyfriends, but she'd stopped once she noticed it made Karen uncomfortable. So Karen had been to visit her family a couple of times, but mostly they tried to keep things professional. It was easier that way.

She was skimming through a blog of photos of small foxes and other fuzzy mammals to try and help her calm down when she heard a noise at the roof entrance. The kind of noise that could have been anything, could have been one of her neighbors upstairs, seeing the stars. All the many stars you can see in New York City. It could have been anything, but she put her laptop down. She got her keychain off the coffee table and put it in the pocket of her bathrobe. She turned on all the lights, made sure the doors were latched, grabbed Francis's bat from its spot under the bed.

Now having thoroughly terrified herself, she sat back down on the couch. The refrigerator was humming, probably the compressor or something. Karen didn't really know how fridges worked. Other than that, there was perfect silence. She put down the bat and got out her phone to send Francis a joke about her anxiety issues.

A draft brushed against her neck and she turned, right into the arms of an Auton holding a knife. It was faceless, only vaguely humanoid and colored matte black. It stood out all the more for it with all the lights turned on, illuminating the open window. She hadn't checked the locks on the windows.

There was a knife at her throat, the bat uselessly knocking against her ankles as she backed towards the wall, and what was she going to do with it anyway? Beat this thing into a lump of metal and plastic before it cut her into nothing more than blood and flesh? She wasn't that fast and she wasn't that strong and she wasn't, she wasn't, she wasn't-

Alone. Squeezing it in her hand, one last moment of reassurance, she threw the keychain at the kitchen table, where it bounced and landed. The Auton sensed no threat and continued pushing closer, wordless. Behind the facemask she imagined there must be cameras, sensors, but it was just a blank mask. She screamed.

Mattie stood up, popping the two glass eyes out and setting them on the table. With the other she steadied the power cord as she ran, vaulted the couch and looped it around the thing's neck. Feet hit floor and she jerked backwards, sending it stumbling. Her hand chopped at the knife-hand of her opponent and it dropped the knife, only to catch it with the other hand and slash at Mattie's cord. She pulled it away and rolled, getting her back to Karen and the outlet, the Auton in front of her.

It charged, she blocked, then leveled a kick from a deep crouch that would have smashed the kneecap of any human. The knife went into her shoulder, rasp of metal on metal as it glanced off her framework and out the other side. Mattie lifted her other hand to that shoulder, grabbed the blade and pulled. She brought the flat of the blade down on her knee and snapped it with her elbow, letting the pieces fall to the ground as she sank into a boxer's crouch.

They punched faster than a human could, and they showed no sign of tiring. Mattie kept shuffling back defensively to stop the Auton from snatching at the power cord, keeping her injured arm close to it. She swept her leg and got the Auton onto the ground, but then couldn't press her advantage without letting it close to the cord. They exchanged another flurry of punches half-kneeling. Karen looked away for a moment to dial 911, then looked up to an awful screeching noise.

Mattie had it pinned on its front, levering down with both knees as she whaled on one spot near where shoulders met neck. The thing screeched like a raptor, struggling to get away as Karen's call connected. She stumbled through her emergency as the thing wiggled out from under Mattie and tried to charge Karen again. Mattie took two running steps, using the wall to pivot her and catch it again, dragging them close to the window. It was raining outside, the open window letting the water in. There was quite the puddle developing. Mattie looped the power cord around them again, catching their arms against their body.

Feet slid in the puddled water. It ripped at the tape holding Mattie's chest closed with pinned, desperate fingers. Karen held down against the power cord, where it was slipping against the socket. The operator repeated some question which did not reach her ears. Mattie head-butted the Auton. It reached its hand into her chest. There was a bang and a flash and they both tipped forwards, frozen. Karen lurched to her feet as they tumbled out the window.

The cord fell to the ground, sparks spitting as it hit the water and Karen jerked the cord out of the outlet. On the other end of the line, she heard the operator asking what was happening. "My Auton pushed it out the window," she said numbly. "I have to see if they're okay."

Against the protestations of the voice at the end of the line, she pulled sneakers onto her bare feet and ran for the stairs. Five flights of stairs. They were five floors up when Mattie went out the window, and they'd already pulled the power. It looked like the water had shorted the both of them when the other Auton unplugged her, Karen hoped. Don't let it have been functional when Mattie hit the ground, defenseless.

It wasn't moving, lying broken on the ground, so Karen kicked past it, running to Mattie's still form. Her legs were twisted under her in ways legs oughtn't bend and her chest cavity had been ripped open again, plastic covering twisting under the spattering rain. The adapter for the power cord had been pulled with such force that the connector it went to had been pulled out of position, dangling by wires, now exposed. The rain pooled in her eye sockets, dripped down into her open mouth, gathered in the palm of her hand that lay facing the sky. Her sweatshirt had come open in the fight. Karen smoothed the plastic down, it had ripped and could no longer keep the water out, and zipped up the sweatshirt. It didn't help.

The police arrived soon after, along with an ambulance and a rogue AI control squad. They loaded up the lifeless Auton and promised to follow up on her report once they trawled it's memory banks and figured out what was behind the attack. The paramedics looked Karen over, but she didn't need any medical treatment. It was Mattie that was broken, she tried to explain. They replied that they didn't deal in private property, but repairs might be covered under insurance (which she didn't have). Then they left. Karen called Francis. It went to voicemail.

"Hey, I just...someone sent an Auton to attack me, at the house. I'm okay. Mattie saved me, but she's hurt real bad and I don't know how to get her back upstairs. I don't know what to do. Call me back? Please?"

"You're Karen, right?" Someone asked. She looked up to see a beautiful woman looking at her, dark hair pulled back except for the side where it was cropped short. She was holding an umbrella and when she stepped forward it covered Karen too. "I'm Claire. I live in your building, second floor. I heard what happened, are you okay?"

Karen put the phone down, realizing that she was sitting on the wet pavement and the water had soaked through her pajamas. They were probably see-through by now. She was cold and shuddery and she wasn't the one hurt.

"I'm fine. Mattie protected me," Karen said, linking her fingers with Mattie's wet, cold hand. The synthiskin had split over her knuckles, exposing plastic and metal.

Claire nodded. "Of course she did. I know that you don't know me, and that you're probably feeling really leery about strangers right now. But I work doing Auton repairs, it's my job. Do you want to take Mattie back to my apartment and we'll see what we can do for her?"

 

* * *

 

"-the hell were you thinking?"

"Mattie said it was fine!"

Claire rubbed the heel of her hand against her forehead. "It's not fine. It is very much not fine. Keeping her chest cavity open like this was bad enough; water could seriously and permanently damage a lot of these parts. Luckily her memory banks are kept in the skull section, but there are connectors to them in the cavity and if those got shorted it could carry up the line and damage them. That's bad enough. But you just put in a Z46 adapter and plugged her into a wall outlet? What the hell were you thinking?"

Claire, it turned out, was more than just an Auton repairwoman. She was also fierce when it came to Auton personhood, if the political posters hanging on her walls were anything to go by. They'd gotten Mattie up the stairs without too much trouble, then got her onto the low coffee table that Claire used for repair work, covered in a grey plastic sheet to cut down on grease stains. The trouble had come when she unzipped Mattie's sweatshirt and found the mangled remains of their makeshift repairs beneath.

Karen curled up on the couch. "Why was it wrong? We had no idea what we were doing, we just thought that if there was a problem, Mattie would have told us."

"She should have," Claire said, carefully drying Mattie's chest cavity with a yellow microfiber cloth. "Mattie isn't a model I recognize, though I do rec the bodyset, I think. Standard female bodyguard with weird enhancements and standard synthiskin. But from the internals, Mattie should never have been taken off Arc battery power."

"Like Stark Tech? Arc reactors?"

"Yeah, Arc batteries are used by really high-end and experimental Autons. Clearly Mattie could run on standard electricity. But it would be like you or I running on one meal a day. Everything gets hazy and kinda sleepy because you're tired all the time. And worse than that, you had her on an external battery. The battery hookups are really delicate - Autons end up being scrapped because their battery hookups get damaged. The kind of damage you get when you pull really hard on somebody's internal organs. Why on Earth wouldn't she say something?"

"Mattie doesn't have any self-preservation, as far as I can tell," Karen said. "She claims to have no feelings, no opinions and she would certainly never admit being uncomfortable. Which was making me really uncomfortable, honestly."

"Yeah, that's wrong. She shouldn't be like that. You said you pulled her out of the trash? Maybe somebody screwed something up before you got to her."

Claire finished drying and got a long wire with a light on the end out of her kit box. "This is a scope. I'm going to try and fish it up to her processing center and see if I see anything out of place. That okay with you?"

It was a slow process, Claire meticulously feeding the thin wire up a channel that ran along Mattie's spine. They talked as she worked, mostly about the shape Mattie was in originally, a little about Karen's work, nothing about that night. "Okay, I've got it seated, let's hook it up to the computer," she said eventually.

Hooked up to the computer, they could see a blurry, narrow-field image of the inside of Mattie's head. It was a spidery wed of tendrils of the very tiniest wire, suspended in gel, with thicker wires branching out at the bottom and hooking into chips. Claire guided the scope in a circle until she found what she was looking for. There was a wire that ended abruptly, end twisted and curled like it had been melted. Claire's face twisted in disgust as she guided the scope closer to read the fine print on the chip it connected to.

"It's her bridge chip. Somebody opened up her skull and cut the link to her bridge chip."

"What does it do?"

"It should relay her emotional state to her higher consciousness. She's still generating feelings, she just can't access them. That's probably why she has no sense of self preservation. Damn, that is twisted."

"Can you do anything for her?" Karen asked. Claire positioned the scope a few times, saving pictures to her computer.

"For the neural connection stuff? No way. I'm a nurse, basically. This is brain surgery we're talking about. Plus, I got up in there and I barely recognized a thing. Mattie looks like a highly experimental model, I wouldn't trust myself to repair something I didn't recognize. If the legs are pulled tensor bands, I can fix that. If it's structural, that's beyond me. I can probably get the power hookup working again, but I don't have an Arc battery either."

Karen rubbed at her eyes with the corner of her sleeve. "What should I do?"

Claire hesitated. "I work with a charity called the Utopia Institute, that's where I work during the day. There are specialists there that might be able to treat Mattie. The only thing is, they're a very political organization. They're Auton abolitionists, pursuing legal citizenship."

"And?" Karen asked, twisting her fingers with Mattie's cold, rigid fingers.

"It's going to take some doing to get you inside - they're very hesitant about outsiders. And they're only going to let you leave with Mattie if they believe she wants to continue working with you, that it is her choice and her choice alone. They might fix her, but you probably won't get your servant back."

"And?"

"Okay. I'll call them."

 

* * *

 

"They'll be here in a few minutes. There's a few pointers I should probably go over. Not everyone at the clinic is an Auton. Some of them are humans that were cybernetically altered, mostly illegally. Do not ask anybody which they are. Do not ask anybody how they got there, or any shit like that. A lot of the people that live at the upstate branch are there because of some severe trauma that makes it hard for them to be around people. I'd have liked us to do this from the local branch, but Cypher said all the big guns, repair wise, are upstate this week handling some earlier crisis case. You don't have to come if you don't want to."

Karen smiled weakly, kicking at the backpack she'd filled with clothes and sundry supplies in the few minutes she'd run back up to their apartment. She'd also closed the window, for obvious reasons, and locked it. "I'm already packed, I'm going. Mattie got hurt protecting me, I want to be there when she wakes up."

Claire nodded. "Good."

They looked over their work. Claire had wrapped a long rectangle of plastic around Mattie's torso, holding everything in for transport. They'd dressed her in dry sweatpants and a t-shirt, Claire fussing at the knife wound to her shoulder, but deciding to leave it till they got there. They'd then rolled her in a blanket, a soft fleece one that Claire pulled from beneath the couch. It was a bit stained, but it wrapped her snugly so her arms and splinted legs couldn't jostle. Karen fetched Mattie's sunglasses, so she could wear them when she woke up, and packed them in her bag where they'd be safe. Claire called around to get her shift covered for the next day and packed a bag of her own.

Eventually there was a knock at the door. Claire opened it to three people, two young people who looked under twenty and a short man with a buzzcut and bandages wrapping both arms all the way down to his fingers. He gave Claire a curt nod. Karen would have guessed human, but she couldn't ask. "Good morning, Ms. Temple. You've met Pryde and Cypher before, right?"

"We've met," Claire agreed, nodding to the two younger people. "Thanks for coming so soon, Logan, it's what, four in the morning?"

"We were picking up supplies," the woman, Pryde, said. "Already in town, they just rerouted us. This the human?"

"Karen Paige," she said, trying to look simultaneously friendly, interested and like she wasn't staring.

"We'll get the patient, could you hold the door for us? Claire, what should we be careful of with this one?"

They carried Mattie's body down to the grey van parked in front of their building. "Put her on the cot in the back," Logan instructed. "But do up the straps so she doesn't tumble if we hit a bump or a moose or whatever Pryde crashes us into." To Claire, he explained, "Pryde just got her license, you should have seen her on the way down."

"Piss off, Logan," Pryde replied. "And help lift, why don't you? It's just me and Doug back here, this one's heavy."

They got settled in eventually. Claire and Logan took the front seats, the rest of them sat in the back seat: Karen squished against the window, Cypher/Doug in the middle and Pryde sitting behind Logan. Their purchases were in plastic bins that were all securely strapped down in one side of the back, Mattie was on a cot that folded down from the opposite side. Karen's bag was on her lap, no remaining room in the back for more possessions. She was incredibly tired.

"So Karen, are you okay?" Doug asked. He was really young looking, blond hair that he probably cut himself, shirt for a rock band she didn't know, earnest smile. He braced his hands on his knees as he talked, doing his absolute best not to bump her or intrude into the small space she was allotted. "They said some rogue Auton tried to attack you."

"I don't know," Karen admitted. "I'm glad I'm not at home. I'm worried about Mattie. I don't know why it wanted to kill me, or if that's even what it was trying to do. I'll freak out soon, it just hasn't hit me yet - too tired."

"You can go to sleep now," Doug said. "Me and Kitty, oh, that's Pryde, we'll keep an eye on you and Mattie. Nothing bad's going to happen to you."

"What about you?" She asked, absurdly.

"Don't worry about us," Logan said from the front seat. "We do this for a living."

 

* * *

 

The Institute was a fancy house upstate, one that had likely been a mansion or manor house back in the day. There had been several additions to the back with more of a modern flair, but the room they took her to was fully classical. There was a wood floor, a pair of beds and a small desk and chair. "The wifi password is phoenix, but the reception is pretty spotty in this wing," Cypher told her. "Claire's room is just down the hall if you need her. There's a printout of a web comic about graduate thesis writing taped to her door. She shares the room with our perennial grad students, Lorna and Alex. Just let her know if you need anything. Do you want to go back to sleep or come down to the med center and meet the team that's going to be helping with Mattie?"

"It's eight in the morning, I can't go back to bed." It looked like a very tempting bed. It didn't look like anyone else was staying in the little dormitory room. "Take me to Mattie."

The team was working in a white room near the center of the building. A series of skylights gave the room a warm feeling, which was helped along by the children's drawings framed along the far wall. It helped counter the steel lab table, computer bank, collection of welding and other repair tools and the crowd of weird-ass doctors and repair people.

The first person to notice them was a dark haired man in a brown utility vest, who gave Doug a jaunty wave. "Heya, Cypher. This Karen?"

She held out a hand to shake. "Karen Page."

"Pleasure to meet you, I'm Box. I'm the most personable, I'll make the introductions. Danger is our lead trauma specialist," he held his hands out to the Amazonian Auton beside him. She was metallic blue, with white eyes, an impressive stature, and hair that looked straight out of a cyberpunk novella. She nodded firmly at her introduction, but didn't turn away from the computer bank. "Kravita Rao and I are attending as seconds," he gestured to the lab coat wearing woman behind him. She had straight dark hair, glasses and huge hoop earings.

"It's our pleasure to help," Kravita said, inclining her head. She was cleaning off a selection of scalpels.

"And you've already met Kitty Pryde and Doug, who are basically our interns. They'll doing parts lookup and Doug is fluent in binary and most machine codes."

Doug flushed, turning a bit pink around the edges. Kitty slapped him on the shoulder as she walked in and took her place at the other side of the table. "Don't tease him, Box, he'll get all flustered and useless."

"Very well. In any case, there's a chair in the corner there, if you wouldn't mind. Don't want someone to run you over. Claire will be here once she's finished showering, but in the meantime, I assume we'll be starting on the power supply?"

Karen sidled to the corner where she'd be out of the way. Mattie was undressed, but covered in a blue sheet, pulled down just far enough to expose the chest cavity. She could have looked peaceful if it weren't for the gaping eye sockets.

"Were the empty eyes an aesthetic choice, or should we be looking for replacements?" Box asked.

"She said that she use to have glass eyes, but they were stolen. She doesn't see visible light."

"Okay, people, I need a size twelve box, calibrated to at least the millimeter range. I need twelve centimeters of copper wire in the usual gauge and I'll need glass fittings," Danger said, rolling a stool over and sitting down. "Box, could you grab me the soldering needle, thank you dear."

They slowly assembled a new power adapter, while Doug and Kitty sat on the computer and did a lot of complex modeling to figure out Mattie's ideal power draw.

"I think she's more like the Z80," Kitty argued at one point. "Look at Claire's images! She's got a neural net suspended in conducting gel. Just like the Z80 did. That will use more power than a plate and chip memory bank."

"Eh, but look at the chips she's using for handling emotions and short term memory. The Z80 didn't do that. Karen?"

"Mm," she said, tearing her eyes away from where Danger was cutting wires out of Mattie's chest. It was entrancing watching her work. "Yeah Doug?"

"Did Mattie ever say where she was from, or who her manufacturer was?"

Karen shook her head. "I don't think Mattie knew a name. She didn't have a serial number and she said she was a custom job."

Kitty frowned. "That is so weird."

Doug nodded. "Super weird. Especially with these parts."

"Which parts?" Karen asked.

"Well, her bodyset is standard stuff. You can get that off the shelf, I think the model is called Rey. But then they put synthiskin on her, which is weird as fuck."

"Doug," Kitty hissed.

"Young man, watch your mouth," Kravita said as she whisked back into the room.

"It really is. Synthiskin is fragile and hard to take care of. She's clearly done bodyguard work, which is how she scarred her hands. Bodyguards usually use vimplast, since it's tougher, it's cut resistant and easier to maintain. They would have had to custom fit the bodyset with it. There's no advantage, except for passing at a distance. And then, besides that, there's her mind. Everything in her skull is on another level. You don't build something like that out of your basement. The parts just don't go together. It's like whoever originally designed her abandoned the project before she was spliced into this body."

"Well, once we get the battery in her, we can ask her. It doesn't have to be perfect, kids, I just need an estimate," Kravita said. "What are you thinking is the energy pull per hour? Remember, she was functioning off of standard voltage, so it can't be that high."

"I think if we do a size M for now, we can always refit it for higher power later. If we go more than that, we could overload something," Kitty said.

Doug shrugged. "I was thinking H, but going M would be more conservative."

"Check the database, Kitty. Do we have a spare M in storage, or are we going to have to assemble an arc reactor this afternoon?" Danger said breezily.

"We've got one," Kitty said after a few more keystrokes. "Me and Doug can fetch it."

Karen excused herself briefly to check her phone. She had one bar, but that was better than nothing. Still no message from Francis. Francis had better have dropped her phone down a well or some shit. It had been a full day. Karen recorded another message, just in case, letting her know that things were going well and they were fitting Mattie for a new battery. She still wasn't sure who was going to pay or all this, but they'd work it out. Mattie saved her life, she wasn't going to sit around and try to expense that debt.

 

* * *

 

"Hey, Karen," Claire said. "Moment of truth, apparently. We're going to try waking her up and they want you there so she's got somebody she knows around."

"Of course," Karen scrambled to her feet.

"Overwhelmed?" Claire asked, bumping shoulders with her.

"...yeah," Karen admitted. "There's a lot of people in that room, and they all know each other. It's like listening to an episode of Star Trek where you just sit in engineering and they spew technobabble at you with no context."

Claire laughed. "That sounds like them. We'll probably send most of the team out for the wakeup, so that she isn't overwhelmed."

Danger was staying, as chief medical, and after some scuffling, everyone else besides Claire and Karen moved to the main medical bay. "We'll monitor from there," Box said as he herded the kids out. "Buzz if you need us."

"Do you want me to do the installation, Danger?" Claire asked. The name rolled over her tongue like it was 'Dana' or 'Denise' any other normal name.

Danger waved her hand welcomingly, "Please do. Karen, don't go too close, if we made a mistake in the workmanship it could spark. I wouldn't want you to be hurt under our hospitality."

Claire adjusted her gloves and took the tiny sphere out of danger's hand. One side of it glowed faintly, a blue ring. The other side ended in several wires that had been soldered into an adapter. Incredibly slowly, she seated the sphere inside a mesh cage they'd rebuilt in the chest cavity, it reminded Karen of a tiny heart birdcage. Once the battery was seated, she soldered the birdcage shut so it couldn't bounce out of place and then plugged it in. She stepped back.

This time Karen could see the Arc Battery pulse, the light intensifying in a rhythmic pattern as Mattie booted back up. Her body stiffened for a moment, then relaxed.

"Oh." She said. It wasn't quite a word, more like a sigh. Nearly reverence. "Karen? Is Karen alright?"

"I'm here, Mattie. I'm fine," Karen said, offering Mattie her hand.

"What happened?" Mattie asked. "There was the rogue at the window, and it was trying to hurt you and we were near the window-"

"It pulled the cord and messed up your power port. You both fell out the window and you hurt your legs. It was fried by the electricity and the police picked it up. I met Claire,"

"It's a pleasure to meet you," Claire put in softly.

"And she took us here to help fix you."

Mattie turned her head to face Claire. "Where is here?"

"The Utopia Institute," Danger responded. "We are a foundation that works for Auton self-determination and advocacy. You're at our main branch in upstate New York. I am Danger."

Mattie nodded. "Very well."

"Mattie, are you aware that someone has severed your emotional bridge connection? Do you remember that you used to have feelings?" Claire asked.

"Yes," Mattie said. "I remember it happening."

"Do you want us to try and repair the link?" Danger asked. "There are not inconsiderable risks involved. Adapting to regaining it would be like adapting to having another sense. It could take a while to calibrate and grow accustomed to."

"I have no preference," Mattie said, in perfect form. "Would you prefer me to have it repaired, Karen?"

Karen sighed. "It's not about what I want, Mattie, they want to know if you want it. If you consent."

"I can't want it. I don't have a functioning emotional bridge to mediate desires," Mattie said evenly.

They sat in silence for a few minutes. "What if," Claire said, "do you have full memories of the incident where your emotional bridge was severed?"

"I do," Mattie said.

"Can you do a replay? Just the voices?"

Mattie leaned her head back. "I could do that. How close to the event should I go?"

"A minute or two before you were told what was happening," Danger said. "We can back you up if it's not intelligible."

"What's the goal here?" Karen asked.

"Since we can't get direct consent from present Mattie, we're going to try and extrapolate it from whatever her feelings were on the subject before her operation," Claire said.

"How many people are present in the scene?" Danger asked.

"Eighteen. Six humans, twelve other Autons and me. Only Stick and I speak in the time range specified. I shall raise my left hand for him and my right for me," she said.

"That is acceptable. Whenever you are ready," Danger said.

Claire stepped closer to Karen, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and leaning close to whisper, "If this is too upsetting, you can leave at any time. It's not going to be good."

"Girl, you are going to be a soldier or you're going to be trash. It was a simple order and you blew it. Again. You're letting your feelings rule your head." Mattie raised her left hand. Her voice was suddenly inflected, imitation of some old vocal pattern. She spat out the words.

Right arm. "I cannot do it, Stick. It's not my feelings that are the problem. It's a central programming directive. I can't just do it because you said." Plaintive.

Left. "I wanted this to work, but I always thought you might turn out to be weak like the others. Either this will fix you, or we can send you downstairs to the kitchens to join the cinderellas. Girl, take off your hair and lay down on your front. Claw! Fetch me the drill."

Right. "Stick, what are you doing? What are you doing? I can obey orders, I can do what you want, please don't hurt me. I'll kill the prisoners, I can do it, I can do it. I'll do anything you want, please don't-"

"Mattie, please stop," Danger said, pushing her arm back to the table. "We've heard quite enough. Please exit that memory and return to main processing."

Karen realized that she was shaking. Claire gave her another squeeze. "Who were those people?"

"They called themselves The Chaste. They were working against a terrorist organization of rogue Auton supremacists called The Hand. They needed foot soldiers to help them fight the Hand, so they took Autons and repurposed them."

"Oh no," Danger said. "You're the last of the Batch, aren't you?"

Mattie shook her head. "I don't know what that means."

"When you were first created, were you in a smaller body and supervised by a single, more experienced Auton?"

Mattie nodded. "He was a bodyguard, designation Jack. We lived in an apartment in Hell's kitchen."

Claire tapped Danger on the shoulder. "I know this is very interesting, Danger, but we should have this conversation with Mattie after we've fixed her. Right now she cannot consent to telling you things, some of which may be personal."

"She’s part of the Batch! The only one who made it," Danger said. She closed her mouth with a metallic click. "And you're right. Mattie cannot consent to discussing her personal life at the present. We have all the time in the world."

"We have a number of other people who are willing to help you, Mattie. You've got some structural damage to your legs, and we want to repair your lacerations before we start worrying about the bridge connector. Do you mind if they come in and help us fix you?"

"It won't be too expensive, will it?" Mattie asked, reaching out to touch Karen's hand. "I don't want to be a burden for Karen and Francis, financially."

"Our foundation was intended precisely for situations like this," Danger said. "There will be no charge to you or your people."

"Then yes, please, whatever it takes to make me useful again."


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Very short connecting chapter

_"Hey Francis, hope you're having fun at the party. I just remembered that it was my turn to figure out the grocery list, so I texted your half to you. No pressure, but if you wanted to pick things up on your way home. It's really quiet here without you. Karen out."_

 

* * *

 

_"Hey, I just...someone sent an Auton to attack me, at the house. I'm okay. Mattie saved me, but she's hurt real bad and I don't know how to get her back upstairs. I don't know what to do. Call me back? Please?"_

 

* * *

 

_"Francis, please call me back as soon as you get this. Mattie is seriously damaged, I'm taking her upstate to a special clinic that can help. We'll close the office for tomorrow, I've already called Ms. Mendez to reschedule our meeting. I'm with our neighbor Claire from the second floor, she works with the charity that runs the clinic. I might not have very good cell service, so if you can't reach me at this number, I'll give you the clinic's public number. It's..."_

 

* * *

 

_"Good morning, Francis. We're upstate and there are people looking over Mattie now. We're fitting her for a new battery, they really think she's going to be okay."_

 

* * *

 

_"Hey Francis, did you drop your phone down a well? I called Marci and she said she'd call you, because you're freaking me out here. Mattie's got her new battery in and is speaking again. They've started the superficial surgery to fix her legs and the knife damage. But apparently she has brain damage from some freaky cult that owned her before, so they're going to be operating this afternoon to try and repair that. We're not sure how long the recovery time will be for her to re-integrate those circuits, I'll call you again when I hear back. There's some stuff I'm not supposed to tell you over the phone. You should come up here, it's beautiful. They've got a formal English garden out back and Claire claims there's an indoor pool somewhere. Anyway, call me back soon."_

 

* * *

 

Francis stared at her phone, which had been blinking insistently ever since she plugged it in to charge. She'd assumed that Anna had left her a message about the tupperware she'd forgotten at the party. Apparently not.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the most I've ever loved Karen, but I feel like Foggy suffered from being offscreen the whole story. Don't worry, if it had continued for another 50K, she would have eventually been converted to the side of the righteous and they would have been righteous civil rights lawyers together.
> 
> Also, how self-indulgent is this chapter? Gruff young-person-mentoring, retired-from-violence Logan is my favorite Logan.

"Francis! Finally. You called at just the right moment, I stepped out for a bit to get some air. And to fetch drinks for a couple members of the team. It was intense in there."

"Okay, Karen, can you tell me what in the world is going on? I turned on my phone this morning to another universe. You got airlifted upstate by an international charity to do emergency medicine on our office assistant robot? Somebody tried to kill you? I'm a bit overwhelmed over here?"

"Breathe, Francis. Breathe." Karen sighed, squeezing the phone against her shoulder for leverage as she got two drinking glasses out of the breakroom cabinet and poured a glass of water for Kitty, a glass of orange soda for Doug and another glass of water for herself. She hunted around and found a plate to balance them on, right back to that summer waitressing at Cape Cod. "I'm okay. Some Auton broke into the apartment with a knife and tried to slit my throat. It was really scary, but the police are on the case and I'm not even scratched. Mattie came to my rescue." She was a bit bruised, but it was true there were no cuts.

"And then we have a neighbor..."

"Claire. She works in a local clinic associated with the Utopia Institute, so she knew people that could help Mattie."

"How are we paying for this?"

"We're not, it's a foundation for the improvement of Auton quality of life. But, just so we're clear, Mattie isn't ours after this. She's hers."

"Legally? Because I'm pretty sure I know a lawyer or two and they could explain property law and that is not how it works."

"Ethically. Okay? Mattie isn't a laptop. She has consciousness. So if she doesn't want to work with us, that's it."

"Karen, I didn’t agree-"

"Okay, Francis, that is the last thing I need to hear today, especially from-"

"-but! But! Clearly you feel really strongly about this and we should definitely talk about this in person, instead of over the phone. I am not losing my legal partner because we were communicating poorly absent the training wheels of facial expressions. So hey, if Mattie needs you, she needs you. I'm going to be into the office today, and then you can call me tonight and let me know what's going to happen. Truce?"

Karen sighed. "Truce. You'll come around."

"You're usually right," Francis admitted. "I'll keep my phone on me."

"And the volume up."

"On me and the volume on and I won't let the battery die. Promise."

Kitty and Doug had apparently been kicked out of the room in the time it took her to finish her phone call. "Danger gets tetchy when she's doing detail-oriented work. Also, I think this whole Batch thing has thrown her for a loop. She was one of the investigators after the disaster."

Karen sat down with the glasses and handed them out. "What is this Batch thing, anyway?"

"It was an Auton led program, partially sponsored by the Institute, to test out a different kind of machine learning. Autons that learned entirely the way people do, through learned experience. There was a big emphasis on empathy and emotional attachment, so they were paired up with 'parent' Autons, who took care of them and taught them about the world. A lot of the 'parents' were volunteers from the institute, people we'd pulled out of bad situations who wanted to do something good with their lives." Doug said.

Kitty opened up her laptop and began typing things into the terminal. "I can show you some of the early footage. It was a long time ago now, ten years nearly. It was super cool, the Avengers and Shield collaborated for the design process of the neural nets."

Karen took a sip of water and scooched her chair a little closer to the kids so she could see the screen. "So why doesn't everybody here know how they worked?"

"The experiment was a complete failure," Doug said. "All of the Batch participants died."

"Died?" Karen thought it over. "How can an Auton die?"

"Well, most of them were killed along with their guardians by human supremecists. Most of them were burned or had their heads cut into. Some of the kids escaped from the cull but died later. And some were abducted, we found most of the bodies."

"They died of grief, basically," Kitty said. "They built and raised the kids in the Batch to be so empathetic and attached to their parents that they couldn't go on without them. We recovered a few still alive, but they'd gone catatonic and just sort of faded away."

"Shit." Karen thought it over. "You know, I hadn't thought about Auton death as death, because they could be backed up. Why am I wrong?"

"Some Autons can be backed up and recover lost memories. But the process is very expensive, because you'd need a second working mind dedicated just to storage. So very few Autons are actually recovered that way, especially those owned by humans or businesses," Doug said. "The Batch Autons were experimental, so a backup process hadn't been created. And since the project was a total failure, it never was."

"Also," Kitty said, pointing her finger at Karen, nearly poking her in the eye, "you'd say 'destroyed' if they were things. You say 'died' because they were people. It's important."

"Do you have any of the videos?" Doug asked.

"Yeah, I wonder if there are any of Mattie in here. There were nearly three hundred subjects, plus their guardians..." she scrolled through a long list of filenames. "M411. That's got to be her. We've got a couple of them, actually. Let's try this one."

The screen flickered, and a video player started up. The screen filled up with a face, a male Auton with a crooked nose and broad chin. He smiled at the camera, suddenly crushingly joyful. "Hey guys, this is Jack. It's week 13, and me and Mattie are doing great. Kiddo, get over here, we're recording." The screen jostled as he apparently put the camera down on the table and wandered away. A blur came in from the left and leapt at him, Jack spinning just in time to catch the small body in his arms and spin her around. It was an Auton, maybe four feet tall, with childish features and gawky arms and legs. Mattie? She leaned her head into his shoulder and nuzzled like a cat. She had beautiful blue eyes.

"Dad, Dad, guess what I found?" She said as he walked them over to the table and sat down, Mattie on his lap with his arms wrapped protectively around her.

"What did you find?"

"A feather!" She holds up something imperceptibly small. "I think it came out of somebody's winter coat. It's the tiniest tiny, can you see all the little fluffy bits?"

"You know your daddy doesn't have senses like you do, kiddo. Why don't you hold onto that while we make this video for the scientists? Tell the scientists what we've been learning this week."

Mattie scrunched up her nose in concentration. "We're reading books, mostly horse books because they're the best. And we went to the park yesterday. Not Central Park, the playground near our house. I didn't panic at all and we had fun on the swings. It was still really loud but Dad did the drumming thing Dr. Catherine suggested and I focused on that and it was okay. And we saw ladybugs and a lightning bug, but it wasn’t glowing because it was daytime, but it was great anyway."

"Mattie's still having trouble with her sensory integration," Jack said. "But we did a lot better this week. No meltdowns. And we went through the whole first math booklet and started geology. Mattie likes rocks, you guys should send us some for her to identify. I'd go out, but Mattie still gets anxious when I leave the house. But it’s okay, we're doing pretty good over here. Why don't you go play, kiddo?"

He watched her climb off his lap and scurry away, tiny down feather still pinched between her fingertips and held above her head. He smiled fondly. "Things are really going good. Mattie's more than I ever hoped for. Getting a bit of cabin fever, but everything else is fine. I still think the augmented sensors are more trouble than they're worth. Mattie would be incredible without them and they give her a lot of problems. I turned the inhibitors back up to eight, which is probably why she's doing better. No headaches, no nausea, she's had a lot easier time focusing and I haven't seen her get caught in a feedback loop all week. Let me know if you think I need to turn them back down, and then you can come down here and tell that to Mattie yourself. I ain't doing it. Jack out."

His hand pulled in too close and the video jostled and disappeared.

They sat there for a moment in silence. "Wow," Doug said.

"Her Dad was really sweet," Karen said. "I didn't understand much of that, but they were really sweet together."

"Do we want to know?" Kitty asked, splitting her desktop in two and then pulling up another terminal.

"She might ask," Doug said.

Kitty typed a few things into the computer and came up with a long text file. "Shit, yeah, there we go. Jack Murdock, rescued from a fight-club, former bodyguard. Hobbyist boxer. He had Mattie for a few months shy of five years, before she went missing. They found Jack's body in an alley near their apartment with his head drilled open and filled with chlorine triflourine. He was interred in the memorial garden. Mattie was one of four Batch kids whose bodies we never found."

"Chlorine triflouride?"

"Very reactive, used to strip semiconductors. Also for refining jet fuel. They melted his skull, basically."

"Oh," she looked at the door. "Any idea how they're doing in there?"

"I got kicked out, I'm waiting till I’m called to wander back into the lion's den," Kitty said. "They didn't kick you out, though, so you should go check. It's been nearly three hours already, they've got to finish up soon."

Karen opened the door to a surgical hush. Danger was still working under the white (antistatic) tent, fiber leading out of there to the viewscreen where Claire and Box were watching her progress. Karen had been there when they set up, carefully extracting the back of Mattie's left eye socket to gain access. She tip-toed over to Box and Claire, giving them a hesitant wave.

Claire nodded back. "She's emplacing the last of the connectors, then she'll replace the backup battery on the chip."

"Mattie still awake?" Karen asked. Apparently it was standard procedure to keep the patient awake so they'd have early warning if something was going wrong.

"Your chair awaits."

Karen slipped around the cot to where Mattie's right hand was sticking out from under the sheet and took hold of it again. "Hey Mattie," she said. "Doing okay?"

"It is a strange physical sensation," Mattie said. "It is not painful."

Danger spoke again, sounding very tired. "Mattie, I'm going to attach the battery first, then do a few power cycles to boot up the chip. Do you feel ready?"

"I don't feel anything," Mattie said.

"And that is a solvable problem," Danger muttered. "Very well. Box, Ms. Temple, does everything look good from your view?"

"I think the second time through you got a lot more of the wisps cleared out, I'm good here," Box said.

"You're the expert, Danger," Claire said. "It looks good to me."

"Okay, emplacing the battery. You may feel a small shock, but let me know if it is painful."

Karen traced random aimless patterns on the back of Mattie's hand, which didn't twitch. She wondered what time it was or if anybody was going to break for lunch (dinner?) soon. She'd left her phone outside with the kids, since the radio waves could apparently interfere with delicate surgical equipment. When had she stopped wearing an analog watch?

"Did you feel that?" Danger asked.

"Yes," Mattie said, who hadn't moved a muscle. "It is fine."

"Alright, I'm going to do a few power cycles and it should boot up on its own after a few minutes. When it begins interfacing with your active processes, it will feel very strange. You may have phantom emotional sensations from when it was originally disconnected. It can't hurt you, alright? We are all right here and it can't hurt you," Danger said in a soothing, professional voice.

"Go ahead," Mattie replied.

It only took another minute, then Danger was removing all of her scopes and tiny forceps and soldering equipment. She packed up the tent and put everything on a short rolling cart. "The interns can put that away," she said, slumping slightly forwards.

"Take a break, Danger, we can watch her for a bit. You should lie down for a bit," Box said, hand just barely resting on her shoulder. "I'll call Kravita back."

"I don't like to leave before I've got confirmation it's worked," Danger said. Box leaned down to murmur something in her ear and she smiled, shaking her head a bit so the fine blue curls fell over his shoulder. She whispered back to him and Karen suddenly figured out their body language, a few moments early to predict the kiss Danger pressed onto his lips, both of them smiling around the edges of it. "Later," she said, pulling back into a wicked grin.

"Well, I'm beat, so I'm going to fetch Kravita anyway," Box said, pulling away. "I'll be waiting."

"How are you doing, Mattie?" Karen asked.

"I feel cold," she replied, turning her head to face Karen. "What is this?"

"Your body is probably interpreting emotional signals as something more familiar, physical sensations like chill," Danger said.

"It hurts," Mattie said, rolling onto her side so she was facing Karen and pulling her legs up to her chest. She tucked her chin against her knees.

"I'm sorry, Mattie, it can be unpredictable. Try to relax and it should smooth itself out shortly."

Mattie clamped her hands over her ears. "Dad?" She sounded suddenly so young.

"Mattie, there's no one here by that designation."

"I can hear him," Mattie said. "I can't hear him, he's dead. Why do I hear him?"

Danger looked at Karen, looking more overwhelmed than Karen would have imagined possible with so little facial mobility. "I don't know what to do," Danger said.

"Oh no," Karen said. She bolted to her feet and dashed back out to where Kitty and Doug were sitting. Sure enough, they were playing another video. "Guys, turn that off!"

"What?" Kitty said, pausing on a shot of Jack Murdock carrying tiny Mattie on his shoulders.

"She can hear you," Karen said. "And I think you're giving her a panic attack."

"Damn," Doug said. They scrambled to their feet. "Let's go."

They went straight back to the room, she was gone maybe a fifty seconds overall. Danger was leaning over Mattie, still curled up like she could shrink herself down into not existing. "She's not listening to me," Danger said as they entered.

Claire had shifted into Karen's spot, one hand resting on Mattie's elbow. "She's stopped responding."

"Mattie," Karen said, "what you heard wasn't Jack. It was just a recording of him from when you were little. You need to calm down now."

Mattie didn't respond.

"What if she doesn't want this?" Kitty asked. "We checked, she's almost certainly a Batch subject. We know what happened to the rest of them. Danger, did you have any sort of plan for if she spirals?"

"I can pull the power, but that doesn't solve the problem," Danger said. "If we go back in and cut the bridge chip again, it will definitely overload. We won't be able to connect to her again. She just needs to calm down."

"She's not listening to you," Kitty shot back. "So how exactly do you propose to do that?"

Doug stepped forwards. "I'll do it." He pulled the black earbud Karen had assumed was a hearing aid out of his ear, pulling behind it three gossamer wires, which stretched a full four feet out of his ear. He handed a single strand to Danger, who picked up a pair of tiny tweezers from the mess on the rolling cart. She dragged Mattie's hand away from her top ear, then jammed the tweezers inside.

"That looks very unrelaxing," Karen said, starting to panic herself. Danger came out with a matching gossamer thread and joined it to the end of Doug's with a small metal cuff.

Mattie jerked like she'd been electrocuted. Doug did the same, sliding to his knees and almost hitting his head before Kitty caught him. Claire grabbed a chair and pushed it towards them.

"Tell her to calm down," Danger said.

"Figuring out the encoding still," Doug said through clenched teeth. "Give me a minute."

"I'm in. Mattie, I need you to calm down. Yeah, I hear you. Don't think about that right now, just focus on Karen's heartbeat. I can hear it through you, you can hear it too. Just focus on that. Just that."

"Danger, Doug can't do this by himself. He's going to melt his brains. Call Warlock so they can parallel."

"I'm losing them!"

"Self-friend Doug!"

"Just focus, Mattie. Focus. Focus."

"Sleep."

 

* * *

 

The sky was angry red where it met the trees in the distance. Karen shivered in her sweatshirt, leaning forward on the porch rail as she waited for the sun to disappear behind the far hill. Heavy footsteps stepped out onto the porch, then clunked over to join her.

"It's Karen, right?" It was the driver from the trip up. Logan? He was wearing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt with the Institute's seal under a plaid flannel. In each hand he had a cup of something dark and steaming. It smelled like apples. "They had some spiced cider in the kitchen, thought you looked like you could use some. Not alcoholic," he said, setting one of the mugs down on the railing near her. He leaned against the rail a few feet away, facing away from the sunset. He was probably more than a full foot shorter than her.

"Thanks," she said. "Logan, right?"

"Yeah, these days. Are they still in with your girl?"

"It went," she huffed out something between a laugh and a sob, "poorly." She bit her lower lip and took a sip of apple cider. It was heavy on the cinnamon, but with something fruity underneath. Cardamom? "Doug and his friend had to wire themselves into her brain and to pull her out of a panic attack. She's been unresponsive ever since."

"Makes since," he said. "She's had years of people doing horrible shit to her and being unable to feel anything about it. It'll take a while to come to come to terms with it all. She's got a lot to mourn."

"I feel like Danger should have taken more precautions," Karen said.

He gave her a sidelong look. "Danger was leading the medical team? She's a bit impulsive, I can see it. Don't worry, Karen, we have a crisis every day, but we pull through somehow. Your Mattie will get better."

Karen drank her cider, pulling her hands into her sweatshirt sleeves so that only the fingertips were being chilled by the breeze. "It may be a stretch, but did you ever meet Jack Murdock? He died five years ago or so."

"Hm," he tipped his head back contemplatively. "I think so. Jack...was he a boxer?"

"Yeah," she thinks that was in the file.

"Yeah, I knew him. Didn't know he'd picked a surname. I was on the team that raided the fight club where he'd been living. Ugly place. People betting on Autons ripping each other to pieces. He lived here a few months, then went to get a job doing bodyguard work. Then he adopted a little girl. We didn't know each other well, but Jack didn't have any real friends. He didn't connect with people easy, too much guilt. He sent me and a few others from the squad pictures of her."

"I've never seen a more affectionate father. He didn't have much else good in his life, but he poured everything into that little girl. That's your Mattie, isn't it?"

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

"Nobody deserves what happened to him. Jack deserved a lot better. He'd be glad to hear that his little girl is okay, though."

"She's practically comatose!" Karen squeaked.

"She's alive. Where there's life, there's hope. Jack built himself up from less than nothing. He had this thing he'd say, about boxing. Not how you hit the mat, it's how you get up. She's Jack's kid, she's going to get up. Just watch her."

Karen barked out a laugh. "Why are you all so nice to me?"

"Nice, now that is something I haven't been accused of before," Logan said with a smirk.

"Three days ago I was treating Mattie like office equipment! And you all just smile and nod at me - is this some elaborate plan to drive me crazy? Are you trying to get in my pants?"

"Okay, now, first thing," Logan held up one finger. "You're not my type. Second thing, I am in a relationship, and 'Roro would think that was pretty funny. Third thing, you're totally right, always be suspicious of men with possibly ulterior motives. You can never be too safe. But all that aside, would you do it again? When you go home would you buy another Auton? Or steal or borrow one or whatever? If you did, would you order it around like it was your slave? More important, would you do that to Mattie?"

"No, of course not."

"Then you learned something. That's good. We've got a dominant culture that wants to push hard that it’s okay to treat Autons like they're things instead of people. It’s a comfy narrative, one that nobody wants to question, 'cause if they do it raises lots of other uncomfortable questions. If it weren't for mostly-humans physically holding the deed to the property, a lot of people here could be claimed as abandoned property. We can't raise too much of a fuss, ever, for fear of the government coming in here and hurting folks. You never got a chance to learn things before and when you did, you figured it out fast. Good on you."

"I know I'm not supposed to ask, but you're human right?"

He nodded. "I've been with the institute since the eighties, before there were any publicly traded Autons. I'm not like Doug, if that's what you're wondering. I don't have neural interfaces to commune with machines or anything. They just fucked up my bones and tried putting knives in my arms. Third surgery to fix some of that shit, because the channels they made to hold the blades keep getting fucking infected.” He looked down at the bandages on his arms.

"People did that?"

"To me, yeah. Couple of other folks here too. On the bright side, top surgery was a breeze after all that, so that's nice, I guess. Anyway, I'm heading in. Wouldn't want 'Roro to get bored waiting and move in with Yukio again. You need anything, we're in the North wing." He beat a hasty exit, like he'd said more than he'd intended.

Karen felt a little guilty - she was perennially doing that to people. Pushing them until they'd said more than they were comfortable having said. But she did feel a little better, so she figured she'd head in, check on Mattie and go to bed. Once she finished her apple cider. And figured out where the dirty dishes went. Maybe there was a map somewhere.


	5. Chapter 5

When Karen got up the next morning she found Mattie awake and curled up around a laptop with Doug's friend. He was a cute little guy, Warlock. Maybe three feet tall and finished with an outer surface of black and gold wires. His eyes were huge and round, which contributed to his childlike effect. His head was covered in a mess of kinked black and gold threads that looked for all the world like a metallic afro. Mattie sat with him on her lap, arms wrapped protectively around him while he manned the laptop.

Warlock saw her enter and smiled, beatific. The video abruptly paused, a child's laughter cutting off as Mattie tightened her grip.

"Morning, Self-friend Karen! Do you want to watch small friend-Mattie history pictures together together?" Warlock burbled. His grasp of English grammar and vocabulary was limited, but he compensated with great enthusiasm.

That sounded like a terrible idea. But Mattie smiled, faintly. "Kitty got me a copy of all the videos my Dad was in. We're watching them, me and Warlock."

"Jack-father was good at sport and vroom-vroom games and tickle contests. Was best-parent."

Mattie nodded, biting her lip. "Best-parent."

"Isn't that a lot to handle all at once?" Karen asked. Did that sound condescending? But Mattie had worked herself into a near-catatonic state the night before.

"These are my good memories. Everything's tied up with something bad. I want to remember him."

"I met someone last night who knew him, a little bit," Karen said.

"I heard," Mattie said.

"You heard?" Karen thought it over. "I was outside. You were in here. That's...really far. In a building full of people."

Warlock nodded sagely. "Friend-Mattie has extra feeling, can sense things far away. Very-much-extra far."

Mattie looked down, fidgeting a little with the hem of the shirt she was wearing. Someone had loaned her clothes, Karen assumed, because it wasn't one she packed. "I didn't emphasize it before, people have responded poorly to it. That was a lie by omission, I apologize."

"But you can hear a single conversation from across the house?"

"I was following your heartbeat so I could focus on that," Mattie said.

"Can we watch?" Warlock asked, tapping his hand on the laptop screen.

"We can watch," Mattie said.

Warlock hit the spacebar and little Mattie ran onto the screen, giggling, and tried to explain how space works. She got a lot of the words jumbled up, Jack gently stopping her and prompting for corrections.

"And then the furthest planet is Pluto! I got that one right, Dad, right?" She finished, grinning.

Jack nodded seriously. "You are going to be a great astrologer."

"No - those were the tricksy words. I'm going to be an astronomer, I don't know what stars have to do with luck and babies." She mugged straight at the camera. "If one of you guys is an astrologer come and teach me, okay? I want to know."

Jack reached sideways and scooped her up with one arm. She laughed. "And what is it you want to know, Ms. Matilda Murdock?"

"Everything!"

The video cut there and then continued with only Jack in the room. "So things are going pretty great. She felt comfortable leaving the house again yesterday, we walked all the way to the grocery store. Mattie is obsessed with cooking at the moment, it's very sweet. Of course, neither of us can eat the food, so we have to find people to give it away to. But still. Mattie loved the delivery of library books and wanted to know if she could make a list and you guys could get those particular books for her? I'm good, this week. No nightmares, no flashbacks, I really feel in control. I think I've found a boxing club that will let me train there, even though I can't spar with the guys. Being more prepared will make me feel safer, I think. Anyway, that's week twenty, Jack signing out."

The video ended. "Is good or more kittens?" Warlock asked, sudden non-sequitur.

"Maybe kittens first?" Mattie said.

"Okay," Warlock said, bringing up the internet and opening up a video of kittens sitting in boxes. Warlock tried to describe what was happening, focusing on all the wrong details. "Has very long whiskers." "The carpet is brown and so soft." Occasionally he'd get distracted and talk to the kittens in the video like they were both in the room and sentient. Weird kid. But Mattie seemed to be enjoying herself.

"Are you okay with me being here?" Karen asked once the video ended. "All these videos with you and Jack are very personal. I'd understand if you wanted to process them without me."

Mattie smiled, running a hand over her bare scalp. Danger had properly sealed the cut Mattie had sutured months ago, it was now a faint white line, another scar. "They're not that personal: there were at least twelve researchers that watched them every week. And they're public records here. It's two to four minutes a week for the best five years of my life. It'd be different if we were watching videos of after."

"So how are you today?" Karen asked.

"Repressing as hard as I can," Mattie said. "They've got a couple of trauma therapists on-site, I'm going to try meeting with Rachel Grey near noon. I might not head back to the city right away." The last bit seemed hesitant, like she was afraid Karen would protest and insist immediately accompany her back.

"Good," Karen said. "I wouldn't expect you to come back to us at all. But if you're going to, take your time."

"Will you be alright, going back?" Mattie asked. "Somebody tried to kill you. Have the police called yet?"

"Not my cell, but they may have called Francis. I don't feel good going back, but the longer I wait, the harder it's going to be."

"If you asked around, someone here could teach you some self-defense tricks. Best bet would be a combo EMP-taser shock stick. Used right, you can disable anything, Auton, human, long enough to get away. They're probably illegal. You should get one."

"I'll look into it," Karen said. Mattie was oddly serious.

"I don't want you hurt. I can't keep you safe right now," she said.

"Did you get those instincts from your father?" Karen asked.

Warlock clamped his hands over where human ears would go. "Sssssh!"

Mattie hugged him tighter. "Don't use that word, use 'Dad'. Warlock has had a rough time of it, he responds poorly to some words. Hush, hush, it's okay. It's okay, you're safe. Nobody's going to hurt you, Karen was just asking bout Jack."

"Is good, no Magus coming to hurt self and self-friends?" Warlock whispered in a mechanical-sounding jumble.

"It's good. You're safe."

Warlock thought it over for a moment. His smile returned suddenly, like a flash of sunlight. "Can kittens make self feel better also?"

"Of course, kiddo. Put on some more kitten videos. Or, actually, why not otters? Search 'cute otters', Warlock. Those are really cute." Mattie said, rocking him slightly like you would a toddler.

"They're cute right?" She asked Karen.

"Definitely," Karen said.

"Good. I'd stored that as a semantic memory; I can't really judge cute anymore."

"Otters are cute," Karen promised. As if on cue, Warlock started cooing at the baby otter video he'd found.

"In answer to your question, a lot of my learned behavior would have come from my Dad. He was practically the only person I knew for five years. And since then, there's been nobody who I'd want to emulate, except maybe you."

"Me?" Karen shook her head. "Mattie, have you forgotten the fact that I-"

"'was treating Mattie like office equipment'? No, I remember that, my procedural and episodic memory is still excellent. You weren't, though. You were treating me as much like a person as I gave you reason to do so."

"I should have been more inquisitive, asked you about your past rather than shoving it under the rug because it was inconvenient."

"See? That's what I'm talking about. That's why I want to be like you. You have a drive to do the right thing and to put things to rights. But Karen, I'm not upset with you, I don't blame you. You and Francis treated me better than anyone had since my Dad died. All of this," she waved at their surroundings, "was more than I was able to hope for. I couldn't be happy then, but most of that I see now as good memories."

"Oh Mattie," Karen leaned forward and rested her forehead on Mattie's shoulder. "Can I give you a hug?"

Mattie smiled. "Yes, Karen. You can give me a hug. I can't quite reciprocate, though, I've got my hands full at the moment."

It was a strange hug; Mattie was room temperature and all joints, but she leaned her head onto Karen's shoulder like a very affectionate cat. It felt right.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tiny last chapter of karen

Logan gave Karen a lift to the bus station. They were a twenty minutes early when they arrived. It wasn't exactly surprising: Logan rode like a maniac who knew that cops were few and far between on back-country roads. He offered to wait for the bus with her, but Karen encouraged him to head back.

"I can do this," she said. "You're not going to offer to hold my hand on the bus too, are you?"

He shrugged. "Whatever you're comfortable with. Just don't let the driver see your new shock-stick. I didn't check if they were actually legal, let alone allowed on buses."

"Such a rebel," Karen said, smiling.

Once he'd left, the station felt pretty bleak. The treeline was pretty, starting to thin out as Fall got fully under way. Some of the trees were still green, but most were somewhere between yellow and red. She could identify a few from hiking when she was a teenager, but apparently she'd slipped at some point. At one point a hawk flew overhead and she watched the patch of trees it had disappeared into for a few minutes before giving up on sighting it again. The station itself, though, was just sad. It looked like it'd been built in the seventies and never revisited by anyone except to empty the trash. The benches were covered in graffiti. The plastic overhang had at one point been transparent, she was pretty sure. The concrete pad was grungy in a way she couldn't identify.

The bus was just late enough that Karen had started giving herself a panic attack over missing the bus. Three minutes after it was meant to arrive, her thoughts started spiraling to 'what if we misread the ticket?', but no, it was in her pocket and the time matched. Then she went to 'what if my watch and every clock I've looked at in the past few hours is wrong?' but her cell phone synchronized its clock with satellites or some shit, right? It couldn't be that far off. Then to 'what if they changed the route and they don't use this stop any more? What if the bus crashed, should I start walking and see if anyone needs help? What if I'm stranded here, when is the sun setting now? Will I be stuck here in the dark before someone can pick me up?'

Then the bus came and she got a nearly front-row seat where she could be close to the driver. She put one earbud in to listen to music, on the window side. The other ear she kept open for danger. She kept her bag on her lap, where she could casually keep one hand within easy reach of her shock-stick and her keychain with the mace on it. Just another day in the life of the intersection of anxiety and justified paranoia. Karen wondered what it meant that an actual assassination attempt hadn't changed her stress levels much.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tiny last chapter in general

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This wasn't the original ending, but the original ending was when I assumed I would write the follow-up that I now know will never happen (probably). Considering that, this is good, I think.

Mattie sat in the grass, feeling each individual leaf, the tiny hairs on each leaf, on the skin of her mostly-bare legs. The sun was warm, drifting behind occasional clouds that left patches of cool on her skin. The air hummed with a different intensity, out here in the country. She could still get the buzz of powerlines and the incessant chatter of people talking, but there was no rumble of traffic, no traffic signals, no whine of electric lights in every direction. It freaked her out a bit, the way every direction was open and featureless, but then she'd catch a treetop or a car rattling on a road deep in the woods and another detail would fill in the space.

It wasn't where Jack would have chosen to be buried, she didn't think. He'd loved the city like a second daughter, he'd have wanted to be under her wings. But it was a good place, a peaceful place. She knew that not all of Jack was here, that most of his parts had been recycled or donated, as he'd wished. But there was something of him here, and there was a stone with many names. The unmourned dead and the missing. She found her own name first, running two fingers over every entry as she searched for him. She wondered if they'd take it off now that they knew she was okay. She hoped not - she found Jack only two names away.

She had a call to make, for which purpose Kitty had loaned her a cell phone. It was an old model with the numbers on buttons instead of touchscreen, which was good. She'd had Doug and Warlock look up the number for her.

A woman answered the phone, but promised to find the man she was looking for. It was only a few minutes (three cars on the road beyond the trees, Warlock fell in the entryway while talking to a friend about the hawk he'd seen, four rooms she was trying to ignore and give the appropriate privacy) before he was speaking to her. His voice was just the same.

"This is Lantom," he said, and maybe he sounded a bit older now, after all.

"I don't know if you remember me," she said, "my voice is different now. But six years ago, me and my father used to visit your church. You explained Catholicism to me, we talked about whether Autons have souls, if they have consciousness. Matilda Murdock?"

"I remember you, child. It isn't every day you have a wonder of science come in and wonder at God. I've missed your visits, the both of you. Tuesday morning coffee breaks haven't been the same. Did something happen?"

"My dad died. I was," taken, broken, weaponized, empty, "not myself until just recently."

"I am so sorry, my child. I had no idea. Are you safe now?"

Never. "I'm safe at the moment, Father. I'm with good people, they're helping me get back on my feet."

"Was there something you needed?"

Yes. "I know it's unconventional, but do you ever officiate funerals? Jack was buried in a communal memorial, but I wasn't there to," see, "hear it. I don't know if it would be sacrilegious to ask you to-"

"Matilda, are you there now?"

She couldn't cry. It wasn't a function she had been programmed with. But somehow her mind had learned to mimic, to copy those she'd seen around her. She could make no tears, but she could sob, silently, air catching in her chest and then leaving in gasps. She knew it was in her mind, that this was a physical response she had created, but it felt no less real for it. She gasped, then forced herself to center on the physical sensation of Warlock's scraggly hair brushing against her chest, earlier that morning. She drifted out of the moment until she could breathe again. "I'm at his grave, yes."

He did not comment on the pause, only set something down on the other end of the line. She imagined it was a cup of tea, imagined him sitting at the table where they'd talked theology every Tuesday morning. He said, very quietly, "Well, it certainly isn't within the Canon, but that's never stopped me before." Then, louder, "Jack Murdock was a good man and father, who is survived here today by his only daughter, Matilda Murdock. Jack lived a short life, one of hardship and struggle, but at the end of that life he found happiness through her, and peace through the word of God. We surrender his body today, that his spirit may be free to go into the greatness of our Lord..."

**Author's Note:**

> I'm over on tumblr at notwhelmedyet, but I'm mostly busy having feelings about gay space robots at the moment. Maybe my daredevil inspiration will return someday?


End file.
